Weird, I have the WRT610n and it hasn't reset once in the month that I've used it.

I don't have a Lifedrive, but after a quick search, it appears that it doesn't support WPA or WPA2 so you might need to change your wireless security to (the inferior and easily broken) WEP setting so that your wireless is visible to it. Also, you'll want to make sure wireless b/g compatibility is turned on, since the DIR-825 is a wireless-n router. Wireless-n is backwards compatibile with wireless-b that the Lifedrive uses but it might be possible that that option is turned off in your router.

I have a LifeDrive that I'd like to use at home. However, it doesn't seem to like modern Wi-Fi access points.

I can tell you that, in testing, 11b clients don't get much love, at least on enterprise APs. I can also tell you that there is no technical reason for an 11b client to not work, but that default settings are usually not optimal, and don't always work with both 11b and 11g or 11n clients at the same time.

I had a Linksys WRT610N for a bit, but it needed a hard reset every day (!)

This doesn't seem to be a common problem, did you return it already? You might be able to get warranty service if it's just lying around. It never hurts to have an extra router around - not to mention that it's listed as WIP on DD-WRT.com so it could be an ace eventually.

so I replaced it with a D-Link DIR-825 (which has been working great). The LifeDrive can see them, but can't connect.

I love D-Link's emulators. I'm in "Manual Wireless Settings":
2.4GHz enable, Always,
SSID wiltgen-b or whatever (I suggest not using the same as on your 5GHz radio, though it should work for the LD you'll be able to keep dual-band devices off the 2.4GHz radio and that will help keep everything happy.)
Mixed bgn mode (though if your other devices are dualband then you could use 11b or bg only, and connect the others on the 5GHz radio)
No auto channel scan, probably; the scanner is not very smart, and doesn't know you need an 11b client.
RF scan your neighbors (netstumbler is good for this) and get an open channel, I'd suggest trying 11, then 1, then 6. Stay away from 11n APs and especially clients.
Rate : what's your uplink? If you have a lot of local traffic then auto should work, but the ones that apply to the LD are the lowest settings (11,5.5,2,1). The AP is supposed to do the rates automatically but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't...
Channel bandwidth = 20MHz.
Visible
Security - I suggest open but WEP should be okay (if you use WEP go with 128b, auth both, and note that you're using a hex key, but that draft 11n statement about WEP is misleading so I'm not really confident in the implementation).

These aren't high-throughput or even very good settings for a modern AP, but that's about all I see that you can set in the emulator. Unfortunately there are some other settings I was hoping to see that aren't there. LMK if this doesn't work and I'll hunt around.

If you can, turn off your other clients (or at least connect them to the 5GHz band) while testing.

It just occurred to me, check the AP and see if the client is listed in Status/Wireless. It's not necessarily conclusive but it might give a better idea where the problem is, if your signal is low that's usually bad. (Looks like they measure in %, not sure what the low threshold is.)

If I were a gambler, my money would be on one of channel, rate, or RTS threshold causing the problem, but the other settings won't hurt anything except throughput on the 2.4GHz radio. Once connected you can tweak for speed.

If you're still getting no or very low Status/Statistics/Wireless 2.4/Received count and you only have the LD connected, then try setting RTS to 0 and see if that helps.

I'll follow the thread for once, let us know how it goes and I'll ponder the problem.

With wireless security off, I found that I could just change 802.11 Mode on the 2.4 GHz band to "Mixed 802.11g and 802.11b" and the LifeDrive could connect. (Presumably, this would work for the T|X as well.)

Originally Posted by tdcrone

This doesn't seem to be a common problem [with the Linksys wireless access point], did you return it already?

I wasted several hours with Linksys/Cisco support people that seemed to be technically-illiterate and were unable to help, so they lost a customer of several years, and I've got what looked like might have been a nice router gathering dust.